MALAWI

STATEMENT BY H.E. MS PATRICIA KALIATI
MINISTER OF INFORMATION AND TOURISM

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary General, speaking for first time I would like to join the previous speakers in congratulating you, Mr. Chairman, for being elected to preside over this important Plenipotentiary conference.

Allow me also to thank the Republic of Turkey for the warm welcome accorded to my delegation since we arrived in this beautiful resort city of Antalya. Special thanks go to ITU for extending invitation to allow Malawi to participate in this year’s Plenipotentiary conference.

Mr. Chairman, on behalf of my country, Republic of Malawi, I would like to share with you that the Government is committed to stamping out corruption, and to increasing transparency and accountability. ICT for good governance, improved infrastructure and socio-economic development are integral part of the Malawi Development Growth Strategy.

Currently our teledensity is 6% and we have about 40,000 internet users. While we are procuring off shelve application software we are trying to develop local application software development capacity. Parallel to these efforts is the development of skill and understanding among ICT users. For instance, Mr. Chairman, the Republic of Malawi is training all its public servants in ICT utilization. To improve coordination and cooperation we have also developed a national ICT for development policy.

In our effort to improve communication services the Government will shortly be licensing the second fixed line national operator whose main obligation will be to provide services in the rural and urban areas.

Malawi would like to take this opportunity to thank ITU, who has for the past three years has been assisting Malawi in ICT development especially in capacity building, spectrum management and telecentre development. This has been possible because of the good working relationship that exists between ITU and Malawi. As a committed government, hence our presence in this conference, we would like to see ITU finish the telecentre in time for socio-economic development of the rural areas in our country.

We thank the outgoing ITU management team for the outstanding work that it has performed during its term of office. We would like assure the up-coming management team that we will accord them our maximum cooperation.

Mr. Chairman, as you might have noted we are still focusing on basic ICT utilization, opportunities and challenges. Timely assistance from the ITU is therefore welcome.

In conclusion Malawi would like to urge all members to pay all their contributions in time. For it is from these resources that ITU can enable the developing countries move into information society by 2015. visa-a v, ITU should know that it is there responsibility to collect the contributions, and then share the proceeds equally. For, we have noted that more assistance is going to those who are not contributing.

Thank you for your attention

Long live ITU

Long live Malawi